Monday, January 21, 2013

Wow! Creative Memories is extending their SALE on albums, refill pages and page protectors until 5pm CST, Jan. 22 (3pm PST, 6pm EST)! They have been doing this the last several years in January and it is a great time to stock up on refills pages and coversets. Just wanted to pass this tidbit on to YOU! You can find it here! Happy Scrappin'!

Friday, January 18, 2013

This week I gathered my files of Christmas cards, photos, and memorabilia.

Then I spread out Power Layout Guides on my pool table (you can use regular pages or pieces of cardstock or cardboard if you don't have Power Layout Guides, which are sadly no longer available through Creative Memories).

I do our Christmas album in an 8.5x11" size. I like to include our annual Christmas letter.

Side-loading sleeves work great for that and serve as a marker for me between each year (I'm doing 3 years worth of sorting today):

After the Christmas letter I add our family Christmas card/photo we sent that year

Then I start sorting the stuff in my file folders onto the appropriate pages. Usually I will group the photos together by Family, Friends, Church Friends, Neighbors/Community, etc.

At about this time I start to get overwhelmed and go hunt for some good dark chocolate...

It is really important to have a recycling bin nearby as more than half of the things I've "saved" end up in the recycling bin. (All part of my decluttering mission in 2013.)

At this point I don't bring out the decorative paper, stickers and embellishments. I don't even use the paper trimmer or scissors. It is just SORTING today. Now that I have everything sorted into the order that I want to scrapbook, I pile each year up with the last "page" at the bottom, until I have all 3 years in piles of chronological order:

Finally I stack these 3 piles with the most recent year on the bottom, add Post-It labels with the year and I'm ready to store them away until Saturday when I do the next step: trimming and embellishing.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Yes, you can. Just little baby steps will get you to your goal (completed albums).

Today I prepared a file for my 2013 Memorabilia.

I also prepared a file for my 2012 Christmas cards/photos/memorabilia that are going to go into my Christmas album, family album and/or December Daily album:

Only problem: there is no room in my two expandable file folders to put them in!!!

Sigh.

I did finally squeeze them in but it's just a reminder that I am going to keep my resolution this year to scrapbook twice/week until I get this done. And I am probably going to purge more than half of what I've saved in these files. Yes, I'm definitely going to purge more than half. So today is Wednesday and I scrapbooked for 5 minutes. Yay me.

Donna Lyn Watson, Creative Memories Independent Advisor

I love to write, doodle, pray, play with pens, paper & planners, and celebrate the seasons. I'm a mom of 4 (3 girls and a prince) and I work part time as a preschool teacher. I have been a Creative Memories Director for over 20 years, leading a million dollar team and earning several incentive trips. My greatest passion (besides napping and eating chocolate) is following Jesus and encouraging others.